Free Republic

AUSTIN — Rural landowners carrying protest signs and shouting angry slogans gathered at the Capitol to speak their minds. Their goal: Stopping Gov. Rick Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor. Farmers and ranchers say the huge highway project will gobble thousands of acres of their property only to make money for private toll road companies. “The government is out of control. They’re trying to take our property rights away from us,” said Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, one of the legislators who spoke at the May 3 rally. Republican Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn —one of Perry’s potential GOP primary opponents in 2006 — joined...

The Trans-Texas Corridor, an ambitious plan to crisscross the state with new highway, rail and utility lines, is generating increasing opposition from rural counties. So far this year, commissioners courts in 25 rural counties have passed resolutions opposing the plan, complaining that the 1,200-foot-wide corridors would divide farms and communities while giving rural areas little but headaches in return. "It's just too much," said Guadalupe County Judge Donald Schraub last week, when his county went on record as opposing the plan. "It's a good concept, maybe, but it's not well thought out at this point." Texas Department of Transportation officials...

WASHINGTON — A political spat erupted Tuesday between Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison when the senator filed an amendment to the $284 billion transportation bill that would ban tolls on existing federal highways. The amendment would repeal existing language in the highway bill that would allow states to erect toll booths on federal highways to pay for transportation projects. "Tolling existing roads to pay for new ones is double taxation," said Hutchison, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee. But the amendment was seen as a shot at Perry's proposed $175 billion Trans...